Road Trip With Jo

 Joleen has a dog named Molly so I enjoyed our early morning walk through a huge cemetery  - it has nice walkways to walk on and several paths you could take!  And how fun to see all of the blooming flowers around!

We met Jo's daughter Becca at Moka's for coffee - hooray for not having to wear a mask in!  It's a busy place but we found a table and I had a great coffee - it was fun to catch up with her!

After coffee we headed home for a quick lunch and then went to the neighboring town of Abilene!

We toured the historic Seelye mansion which was built in 1905 for a cost of $55,000 back then - can't imagine what that would be in today's market!!

The owner of the home (who lives there) greeted us and took us on the first part of the tour!  He purchased the house from the two daughters of the original owner - and he allowed them to live there until they died!  Neither one had married and they both lived to be in their upper 90's!  The house was completely remodeled but retained all of the original furniture!  I LOVED the library which was filled with many, many books and a lot of them were first editions!

Most of the rooms still had the original Edison light fixtures and it was so fun to see all of the beautiful furniture from the early 1900's - a lot of it had been purchased at the world's fair in 1904.

We enjoyed hearing our tour guide play the beautiful Steinway grand piano AND an old pipe organ!

We toured all 25 rooms, 11 of them bedrooms!  And there was even indoor plumbing put in when the house was built - yes, they had money!

Down a beautiful circular staircase off the dining room was this bowling alley!  I guess after a meal, the men would head down here to bowl and smoke their cigars!  So many details and stories were provided by the elderly sisters before they passed on and now the current owner passes all of that down to us - pretty cool!

We were each allowed to "bowl" and throw 3 balls - the balls of course were much smaller and were made of wood!  

Along one side of the bowling alley was a HUGE collection of nutcrackers!!  WOW - you could sit and stare at those for hours!

It was a wonderful tour and if you're ever in the area, stop and take that tour because it was well worth the cost!

After walking around downtown a little bit, we headed back home to relax and eat dinner.  Becca's son Kayden was bowling that night so we went to the alley and watched him - he's an excellent bowler and it was amazing to watch him get 7 or 8 strikes in each game!

A wonderful day with an awesome friend!